The advent of commercial rotisseries for cooking chickens and like foods has given impetus to certain design considerations that lend themselves to maintaining cleanliness, ease of operation, maintainability, efficiency and enhancing taste of the chicken. Examples of rotisseries that exemplify the commercial types of rotisseries that shares common concerns with the present invention are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,933 granted to Riccio on Feb. 9, 1993 entitled "Cooking Apparatus with Rotisserie and Reclamation Trap", U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,933 granted to Derakhshan on Aug. 11, 1992 and entitled "Rotary Orbital Rotisserie" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,516 granted to Friedl et al on Jul. 29, 1980 entitled "Barbecue Oven". In these prior art rotisseries the spit or skewer is rotated about its own axis and orbits about the rotisserie oven by virtue of spaced drums or reel plates that are mutually rotated and horizontally support the skewer for rotary motion. In each instance the skewer end is inserted in a driver that is attached to the reel plate and is connected to a planet gear that rotates the individual skewer. However, in each instance the mechanism driving the skewer is constructed in such a manner that the ability to clean and maintain it sanitary is difficult, if not impossible under current working standards in commercial environments.
As for example, the skewer driver in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,516, supra, includes a socket adapted to receive the end of the skewer which essentially is a recess that is closed on one end making it difficult to insert cleansing utensils to clean it thoroughly. In addition the skewer driver is complex requiring springs, seals, retaining rings and the like.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,933, supra, likewise requires springs and a round socket on one end and a square socket on the other. This likewise is difficult to cleanse not only because of the crevices incidental to the helical spring but also because sharp corners tend to collect food particles.
A problem incidental to rotisseries, particularly of the type that operate in the high temperature range, is that the fat of the chicken that melts in the cooking process scatters in all directions and has the propensity of migrating into the skewer driver which is in close proximity to the cooking foods. The problem becomes more acerbated if the individual components are designed so that they capture and retain food particles that are hard to get at and the components are difficult to disassemble or awkward to handle.
I have found that I can obviate the cleansing problem by fabricating the skewer driver such that the stub shaft and planet gear components are easily removed as a small unit from the reel plate to be cleaned independently, is easy to handle, and contains no crevices or sharp corners. Additionally, the skewer driver of this invention is rugged and includes a self contained low friction journal bearing and provides the necessary support to the skewer so that its spacial position relative to the burner is constant which is important for even cooking in these high temperature rotisseries.